Hello anybody who can help me and other people understanding what we see in applications which show memory info.
I want to understand why "meminfo" shows total RAM 335Mb and Internal phone storage: 420Mb (it is on my phone).
Official info from http://developer.sonyericsson.com/wportal/devworld/phones/phone-overview/xperia-mini-pro?cc=gb&lc=en says it should be the next:
- Internal phone storage: up to 320 MB
- RAM: 512MB !!!
One of my thoughts is that the part of memory is used by video-card
Please explain me why it happens
Some is dedicated to the graphic and some more is reserved from the system. The total is 512, don't worry.
Sent from my SK17i using XDA App
Think of the Android Operating System as a Virtual Machine on your phone. It needs some RAM in order to work.
dumraden said:
Think of the Android Operating System as a Virtual Machine on your phone. It needs some RAM in order to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you modify the values besides a VM usage ram ?
No. What you need in order to have more "system memory" which actually is part of the RAM itself is swap. Swap creates a partition on your sd card which then is used by the system to store temporary data. The thing is that its a double edged knife. NAND is 100 times faster than your typical SD card, so loading apps and/or part of the system on your swap partition might end up in a slower overall phone. But we wont have such a problem with our devices, because the system itself doesnt take all that much storage itself.
The only device so far that i know, which had a problem with storage was the Desire Z i own, when you wanted to flash a custom sense 3.0 rom. Then it needed different partitioning in order for the Sense 3.0 to fit into the device.(the device isnt a sense 3.0 device by default).
If you have many apps that you cant seem to fit in the 320mb of free memory, i recommend you install an app2sd application.
Related
Hoping someone can help me understand the implications of using the above methods of backup as it relates to device performance and restore.
First is a question about how Android memory works. I'm running Virtuous Unity 2.39 on an Inspire. According to TiBu my System ROM is 575MB with 40.4MB free, 1.21GB internal with 648 free. The system memory manager says I have 180MB of memory available. So, I'm not sure which memory is which. What's used for storage, and what's used for runtime of programs? Am I correct to assume that if I move programs from internal memory to storage that I'll be able to run more apps at any given time?
Here are my questions.
Will moving some (larger) apps like CoPilot (33MB), Documents2Go (11MB), SPB Wallet (12MB) and infrequently used utilities like SpeedTest benefit the handset performance in any real way, or am I over-thinking this?
If the answer to the above is 'yes', there is a performance gain, what happens when I do a Nandroid or TiBu backup in preparation for a ROM upgrade? I know that TiBu has the setting 'Restore backups to... Original Location' as one of the options. Does this mean I could theoretically restore apps to an entirely new (blank) card if need be?
Will using a utility like D2SD (if I partition my card with an EXT4 segment) likewise help in any substantial way?
How can I help organize the apps and data on the card so that it reduces 'clutter' and presents a more easily managed folder structure to find things that I need?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Anyone out there have thoughts on this?
The system ROM, is the memory used by the custom rom. It stores all the files the rom needs to run. The internal memory is the memory used for storage by all the apps, etc. you have. The 180mb you had free, is the RAM. You'll notice it'll be at different amounts (depending on how many things are running, and how resource consuming the are).
1. Yes, but only if your internal memory is very low (low enough to get the "low space" warning (or at least close to that).
2. No (not fully). Some may be restored fine but some would be corrupted.
3. Only if your device's internal memory (in total) is low.
4. Usually when you move an app to the SD card, they automatically organize themselves in one folder called ".android_secure"
Hope this clarifies some things for you .
Theonew said:
The 180mb you had free, is the RAM. You'll notice it'll be at different amounts (depending on how many things are running, and how resource consuming the are).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate your reply.
So, there wouldn't be any performance improvement if I were to free up more RAM or perhaps create an EXT4 partition on the SD card for system use?
BillTheCat said:
I appreciate your reply.
So, there wouldn't be any performance improvement if I were to free up more RAM or perhaps create an EXT4 partition on the SD card for system use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes there will be a performance gain if you free up RAM but creating an EXT4 partition does not contribute to that. That partition will only be for storage.
I have 25Gb of available space but less than 2Gb for apps? I'd like to use all internal storage for apps and the external card for media. Any idea how I set that up?
I have a Galaxy S2 Epic (SPH-D710) stock ROM, rooted with the zermax kernel and fited with a Sandisk 16Gb class 4 micro sd card.
Problem discovered while installing Navfree. Got the error message "not enough space". So I can't install and move.
Settings>Applications>Maganage applications>All shows
112Mb used of 1.9Gb available.
Settings>Storage>USB storage shows
Total space is 11.5Gb and Available space 11.5Gb
Settings>Storage>SD card shows
Total space 14.83Gb (aka 16Gb!) and Available space 14.81Gb.
syco123 said:
Settings>Storage>SD card shows
Total space 14.83Gb (aka 16Gb!) and Available space 14.81Gb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's perfectly normal dude.. The system uses a chunk of the built-in 16GB for the ROM's use (/system, /data, /cache plus a few other partitions), and the rest is assigned to /sdcard, hence the 11.5GB (I know, that's kind of like false advertisement but what you wanna do ? Sue Samsung ?)
And for the external SD, that's also normal. I'm surprised you didn't notice this detail on the capacity of your harddrive before : end-users tend to think in "base2" (whereas 1KB=1024 bytes, 1MB=1024KB, 1GB=1024MB, and so on), while media manufacturers count in "base10" (i.e. 1KB=1000bytes, 1MB=1000KB, etc). It's a cheap way to reach the symbolic "GB", "TB", "PB" (etc) landmarks more quickly (at least, quicker than the competition).
Do the maths, you'll see that over 16GB that makes a huge chunk of "magically" disappeared storage, but it never was there to begin with.. Also false advertising there, kind of.. But we're all in the same boat here. :S
Snakeforhire said:
That's perfectly normal dude..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, I understand that, that why I put "(aka 16Gb") as I'm referring to a 16Gb card but listing 14.83Gb available. It was to not cause confusion, guess I failed there!
The problem I'm having is, I need around 4Gb (apparently) to install Navfree. I only have 2Gb available to apps even though I have 25Gb of storage.
People must be installing Navfree, so I must be doing something wrong.
16GB is 16000000000btye/1024/ 1024/1024 = 14. 9GB.
So it is 16Gb and not 16GB.
No such 4gb large program for android. The program is maybe 10-20mb. And the 4gb is the DATA. You can store the 4gb in your SD card.
Accidentally sent from my Google Nexus S using XDA Premium
I just tried again and it installed with a file size of 15.53Mb. Weird, Oh well, thanks anyway.
yeah i was gonna say : you might find some bloatware on the android market here and there, but by and large it is still pretty much immune to this phenomenon..
A 4GB program is something you might encounter under Windows, but Linux ?
Sorry that my first post is reviving an old-ish thread, but the initial question asked hasn't been answered (and a search of the forum didn't help me)..
Is it possible to resize the partitions of the internal storage on my s2, and if so, how?
And whilst on the subject of the internal storage, can someone please clarify if flashing a custom ROM will affect files on the "USB storage" partition, or only the files stored on the "internal" storage partition?
Sorry if these seem like noobish questions, but I am new to this customising malarkey, and want to make sure I don't lose any data unnecessarily, like I did countless times with my iPhone...
nope, flashing a rom (either stock or custom) *should* not alter usb or internal sdcard storage. If it does, that's a surefire sign that the guy who cooked the said rom has no friggin clue whatsoever about what he's messing with and to steer clear from this particular rom...
It must be possible to alter the partitioning scheme to resize the internal storage. At least that's the theory, we're dealing with a flavor of linux here, and everything is doable with linux -and enough effort and dedication.
However, as this partition lies on the same emmc chip as the system, data, cache and kernel/recovery/bootloader partitions, I highly recommend *NOT* to mess with it in any way -not unless you have another smartphone lying around that you could use as backup while your borked SGS2 is shipped back to the samsung service centre, and you're prepared to spend some $$ over the repairs (since rooting is absolutely necessary for this kind of manipulation, your warranty would theoretically be null&void in the process)...
hello S3 users,
i wanted to know the memory breakdown of Samsung Galaxy S3.. the internal memory is 16GB.. but what is the application memory? the memory which is allotted for applications?
thanks in advance..
With Ice Cream Sandwich the phone's internal memory should not be more divided into two parts as it happened with Gingerbread or previous versions of android, but it should be completely free to better manage the installation of applications and files that we want to have on our telephone.In Galaxy S3, the internal memory is completely free, then if we use the 16, 32 or 64 GB for all installed applications we can do it! : -)
Evil Eye said:
hello S3 users,
i wanted to know the memory breakdown of Samsung Galaxy S3.. the internal memory is 16GB.. but what is the application memory? the memory which is allotted for applications?
thanks in advance..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have one and even I'm not sure! The phone shows all the memory as if it were one partition (which it possibly is) but says it has 11.35 GB total. If the internal memory and application storage are one partition, I'm curious to know where the rest of the memory is being used.
devid801 said:
With Ice Cream Sandwich the phone's internal memory should not be more divided into two parts as it happened with Gingerbread or previous versions of android, but it should be completely free to better manage the installation of applications and files that we want to have on our telephone.In Galaxy S3, the internal memory is completely free, then if we use the 16, 32 or 64 GB for all installed applications we can do it! : -)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure I completely understand. Are you saying that the internal storage and application storage are shared under ICS? If so, why does the phone underreport the total size? What uses up the remaining ~4GB?
esist said:
I have one and even I'm not sure! The phone shows all the memory as if it were one partition (which it possibly is) but says it has 11.35 GB total. If the internal memory and application storage are one partition, I'm curious to know where the rest of the memory is being used.
Not sure I completely understand. Are you saying that the internal storage and application storage are shared under ICS? If so, why does the phone underreport the total size? What uses up the remaining ~4GB?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the rest of the 4GB must be used for the preinstalled system apps and android..
what i wanted to know is what is the memory reserved for applications..
@esist: can you install 'app2sd' application and let me know what memory it shows as application memory? it must show the app memory at the bottom of that application
So if you wipe cache and parition when flash a new ROM it will wipe all internal right?
Install "App Cache Cleaner" (Pro version if possible) & that will show you the exact memory allocated for app installation !! (On using the cleaner it will show you the cache to be freed & total internal memory used as well as free) !!
If you come to know the correct answer please let me know as even i am planning to switch over to GS3 from my present GS2 !!
Hi all,
I've just received my HTC desire x, checking the specs there is written
that the internal memory should be 4GB, but I have just 1GB.
the total space shows 1.09 GB (screenshot attached)
on the HTC website there's written
Total storage: 4 GB, available capacity varies*
and then *Available storage is less due to phone software.
Is it possible that the OS takes 3GB? Seems a bit too much for me...
Any idea?
Thanks all in advance
crazypixel said:
Hi all,
I've just received my HTC desire x, checking the specs there is written
that the internal memory should be 4GB, but I have just 1GB.
the total space shows 1.09 GB (screenshot attached)
on the HTC website there's written
Total storage: 4 GB, available capacity varies*
and then *Available storage is less due to phone software.
Is it possible that the OS takes 3GB? Seems a bit too much for me...
Any idea?
Thanks all in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is correct man. There is no issue or problem. The system takes ~3gb. Cos imagine when you are factory resetting your phone. The original OS file (called ROM) will reside in that memory with a whole lot of other backup stuff which you cant access.
This is why ppl use CUSTOM ROMS, cos we remove bloatware and other things.
What you see in that screenshot is same as mine and as other. Just buy an external card and it will rock
and please go to about > software update > PRESS CHECK NOW even though "Scheduled Check" is ticked cos there are updates and possibly u have one waiting also.
ayyu3m said:
This is correct man. There is no issue or problem. The system takes ~3gb. Cos imagine when you are factory resetting your phone. The original OS file (called ROM) will reside in that memory with a whole lot of other backup stuff which you cant access.
This is why ppl use CUSTOM ROMS, cos we remove bloatware and other things.
What you see in that screenshot is same as mine and as other. Just buy an external card and it will rock
and please go to about > software update > PRESS CHECK NOW even though "Scheduled Check" is ticked cos there are updates and possibly u have one waiting also.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
^ +1.
anyway i cant see why 1gb isnt enough for apps and games. if you have a sd card, it will be more than enough because of the ability to move apps to sd.
asus.3s93r virthqu
ayyu3m said:
This is correct man. There is no issue or problem. The system takes ~3gb. Cos imagine when you are factory resetting your phone. The original OS file (called ROM) will reside in that memory with a whole lot of other backup stuff which you cant access.
This is why ppl use CUSTOM ROMS, cos we remove bloatware and other things.
What you see in that screenshot is same as mine and as other. Just buy an external card and it will rock
and please go to about > software update > PRESS CHECK NOW even though "Scheduled Check" is ticked cos there are updates and possibly u have one waiting also.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man all doubts vanished now,
does it mean that once rooted (I haven't seen any good rom around yet, please advise if you know any)
I can partition the internal memory? Or it's better not to partition anything for a smoother and faster phone?
Thanks again
Yes 4GB in these mount points:
dev - 303MB
cache - 251MB
data 1,1GB
internal memory (emmc) - 1,1GB
system/942MB
Plus a few more like radio boot and / mount point. It's up around 4GB.
i think you want this? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buak.Link2SD
with that app. you will no longer have to worry about low internal storage again. i use that all the time on my previous phone who has low internal memory (400mb below). but with des x i dont need it. 1gb internal memory are a lot!
nlooooo said:
Yes 4GB in these mount points:
dev - 303MB
cache - 251MB
data 1,1GB
internal memory (emmc) - 1,1GB
system/942MB
Plus a few more like radio boot and / mount point. It's up around 4GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it possible to reformat partitions? Why not to have internal memory (emmc) - 1,1GB and system/942MB merged? I'm not using emmc, cuz I have SDCard for all my stuff, so 1,1 Gb are empty, but I have insufficient space on system.
So I put Carbon on my wife's tablet after not touching it for over a year. Amazing that I can come here and get exactly what I need. What a great community!
I do have a question. I have a 16gb model and a 16gb card. I can see and use the card, no problem.
Using astro or other file manager, the directories seem weird. That's not a problem. The problem is, I can only use 1gb of internal storage - is there a way to get at the balance of that? Or is it lost forever?
Sounds like your NT has the BN's old 1GB allocation for the user-media partition instead of the new 8GB.
To get a 8GB allocation, you can restore the NT to stock ROM and take it to a B&N store to have the repartition done; or you can (Google) search for a repart.img SD-based tool which also does the repartition (and in the process restore the NT to stock ROM). Either way, you can use CWM recovery to back up your current Carbon ROM before the operation and then restore it afterward.
Ah, I completely forgot about this little point. Thank you for the reminder and the options!
One more question from me about this, does it make sense in CM to have two internal storages anyway? Couldn't I just reformat it to have only one partition?
I know how to use parted, so this isn't why I am asking. I just wanted to ask here about potential other side effects.
I already reformatted that my internal memory is about 4GB and my sdcard0 storage is 10GB, but now I installed a huge app in internal memory which can't be moved to SD for some reason, and I want to at least reformat it the other way around or the default 12GB sdcard0 + 1GB internal
All apps are installed in the first internal memory anyway I have figured, so I don't know why this first sdcard0 does make sense at all? I first thought that would be used for apps, but currently there are 10 unused Gigabytes....
I am using a real sdcard in the device ( which is per default mounted as sdcard1 ), maybe that is the reason nothing is put on the internal sdcard0 ??
Any comments on this?
I'd also like to know if this can be done. I've read the posts that explain how to resize partition 10 (media) and 11 (user data), but I would like to know if it is possible to combine partition 10 and 11 into a single partition so that all available space that isn't used by the system can be used for apps and other data. Is this not possible because of different file systems or is there a way to do it?
I've also noticed that even though the Nook Tablet 16 GB physically has 1 GB RAM only 672 MB is recognized and the other 332 MB or so seems to be used as some type of virtual SD Card (this can be seen in Settings -> Apps -> On SD Card). Is there a way to make the entire 1 GB recognized and utilized? I have not been able to find any information on this anywhere.
I am running CM 10.1 on Nook Tablet 16 GB.
bluesock said:
One more question from me about this, does it make sense in CM to have two internal storages anyway? Couldn't I just reformat it to have only one partition?
I know how to use parted, so this isn't why I am asking. I just wanted to ask here about potential other side effects.
...
Any comments on this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Combining the two partitions without tweaking the ROM will likely result in errors when the system at boot time attempts to mount the partition you eliminate, and when some apps reference the file-system that supposedly resides on that eliminated partition. To avoid these errors, the eliminated partition would have be removed from boot-time auto-mount list, and its file-system root would have to be mapped (e.g., symbolically linked) to the mount point of the remaining partition.
skelnik said:
I
I've also noticed that even though the Nook Tablet 16 GB physically has 1 GB RAM only 672 MB is recognized and the other 332 MB or so seems to be used as some type of virtual SD Card (this can be seen in Settings -> Apps -> On SD Card). Is there a way to make the entire 1 GB recognized and utilized? I have not been able to find any information on this anywhere.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 'missing' RAM is what the OS needs to keep the device going. 672 MB RAM free sounds very reasonable. What you see in the list as apps on sd card is the virtual sd card in storage, not RAM.
Sent from my BNTV600 using Tapatalk 4
The "missing" RAM is actually shared memory for the GPU (the SGX540). Video cards need RAM to load textures and whatnot.
You might have noticed that desktops without a dedicated GPU have much lower system RAM than advertised. Ex: my laptop with 3GB of system RAM actually shows something like 2970MB RAM (instead of 3096MB). The 100 odd MB of RAM is shared by the GPU (Intel GMA). If I had a dedicated GPU in my laptop, something like the GTX M GPUs with its own RAM, I would see and be able to use the full 3096MB of system RAM. It's the same thing with mobile devices, they share system RAM with the GPU.
That makes sense about the shared resources for the system and graphics. Thank you for the explanation!
Okay, if that is all, probably changing /system/etc/vold.fstab after repartitioning/removing the emmc-sdcard-partition and symlinking the other of the partitions should do it already? Or how does the storage settings things finds the storage memories? Or is there even something a bit more deeply buried, e.g. inside the kernels initrd or something like that? Does someone know those details?
@skelnik as written in the other thread something more here ...
It probably isn't completely beginner friendly to do all this just by this information here, but I might attempt to do this too, and then will share the information as step-wise as possible. But might take some weeks until I have a bit time left...
And be aware! There probably will be some downsides when not using a physical/external sdcard at all: You will not have the internal storage accessible as a usb storage device anymore (not sure about mtp or ptp mode, but these don't access everything anyway) - so if you screw up something it might become harder to recover. You should then probably have at least some 2gb sdcard you can use, just in case. But my opinion is that you should just pay those $5 for a physical sdcard (should even give you 4 or 8GB already...) and then there won't be these problems.
Use Ineternal Storage as sdcard on Nook Tablet
bluesock said:
@skelnik And be aware! There probably will be some downsides when not using a physical/external sdcard at all: You will not have the internal storage accessible as a usb storage device anymore (not sure about mtp or ptp mode, but these don't access everything anyway)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually you will still have access from the PC (Windows OS at least) to this partition after using the internal storage as an sdcard. You need to go into the USB Connection Settings under Storage and change it to "USB Mass Storage" mode. Also USB Debugging needs to be unchecked in order for you to get prompted to enable USB Connection to PC. After that you will be able to transfer data to and from your PC to the internal partition being used like an sdcard on your Nook Tablet. That partition is set to 10GB for me so that is a huge benefit and allows me to swap out multiple external sdcards any time without disabling any apps.
skelnik said:
Actually you will still have access from the PC (Windows OS at least) to this partition after using the internal storage as an sdcard. You need to go into the USB Connection Settings under Storage and change it to "USB Mass Storage" mode. Also USB Debugging needs to be unchecked in order for you to get prompted to enable USB Connection to PC. After that you will be able to transfer data to and from your PC to the internal partition being used like an sdcard on your Nook Tablet. That partition is set to 10GB for me so that is a huge benefit and allows me to swap out multiple external sdcards any time without disabling any apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure you mean the same thing as me? I am talking about removing one of the partitions and just making one large partition where both /data and a link from /sdcard into that will be. As far as I understood, Android does not do a virtualization of a path but really makes one of it's partitions accessible as usb storage? Or can you also format in ext4 and still read it in Windows?
If that works I am probably not right, otherwise read on:
All your configuration data and everything is on /data and would be removed from being accessible by the system as long as it is connected as usb storage (also all installed apps, ...), and besides that you would need to use the FAT filesystem for Windows compatibility, which is also probably not the best idea, security-wise (any app being able to read sdcard would for example be able to read your wifi configuration, maybe google account login data, etc. etc.).